By Target, an American retail giant recently revealed that it is developing an open source blockchain project for supply chain tracking, as per an official blog post from the company’s VP of architecture on April 22nd.
As per the post, Target conducted a pilot test utilizing blockchain technology to certify paper products along the supply chain back in 2018. The blockchain platform used in the test phase was reportedly made open source on GitHub as “ConsenSource” two months back as per the repository’s update history.
ConsenSource is built upon the Hyperledger Sawtooth blockchain platform as the GitHub documentation. It is one of Hyperledger’s projects which is hosted by the Linux Foundation.
Furthermore, the post also states that Target will feature support for the Hyperledger Grid, which is an initiative developed in part by Cargill, one of the company’s major food suppliers. Before the project was brought to the Linux Foundation via Intel, Cargill reportedly took the lead in creating a “supply chain middleware” in order to record transactions and other supply chain data.
Joel Crabb, the author of the blog post, commented on the company’s enthusiasm for ensuring that blockchain projects pertaining to supply chains remain open source:
“… the largest obstacle to implementing a distributed ledger is getting multiple companies to agree on which data are stored in the blockchain and how the system will be operated and governed. To achieve this close interaction among corporate entities, many companies — including Target — see the most potential for enterprise blockchain initiatives as open source.”
Lastly, Cargill announced an investment in Hyperledger Grid back on January 25th. The core goal of Hyperledger Grid is to streamline supply chains with blockchain tech. Ultimately, this addresses several issues in food retail, including traceability, food safety and trade settlements.
Comments